Abstract

Building on Marraffa's survey of current literature on experimental philosophy ("X-Phi"), I offer some sobering thoughts on the real import of this line of research for the relationship between science and philosophy. I consider such import to be rather limited, since currently the most promising interchanges between experimental sciences and philosophical reflections do not fall under the label of "experimental philosophy", at least in the narrow sense discussed by Marraffa. In this article I offer an analysis of what I perceive to be the main limitations of "X-Phi", and some examples of how they could be overcome. The guiding thought of these reflections is that "X-Phi" is pointing philosophers in the right direction towards a brighter future, but also offering misleading indications on how to get there.